Various ramblings and musings on gardening, agriculture, food and related subjects.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

A trip to Prague

The castle of Pruhonice

I made a flying visit
to Prague last week, to do a couple of lectures to a conference
- Ūdržba
trvalkovych záhonů – maintaining perennial beds, I think that
means. Frustratingly short, but no time wasted, with two guided tours
of two immensely important parks with their botanical collections.

“A
far away country of which we know little” said British Prime
Minister of Czechoslovakia as he handed the country over to Hitler
in 1938. We still know little it seems, beyond the fact that Prague
is a very pretty city and they make very good beer. Visiting here, I
am reminded of the country's fascinating horticultural history, which
I suspect is actually one of the most interesting in Europe.

Years
ago, I think the first time I went to Vienna and stayed with someone
who has become a good friend since, Sabine Plenk. I remember her
showing me the three volume plant encyclopedia written by Ernst Graf
Silva Tarouca in the early years of the 20th
century. The volume on perennials was incredibly comprehensive with
so many of the plants that we think of as 'modern' and a fair number
of good ones we have actually lost to cultivation (such as Aster
puniceus);
what struck me in particular were some photographs of perennial
plantings that just looked so naturalistic and contemporary.

Part of the Alpinium or rock bank at Pruhonice. Potentilla fruticosa

So,
it was a thrill to step inside the great park of Průhonice, laid out
beneath the castle where Silva Tarouca lived. It was his father,
Arnošt Emanuel, who laid out the park, in the late 19th
century, dominated by vast healthy conifers, the like of which we
simply don't see back home. The Silva Taroucas laid out perennial
plantings along the lakesides, a very few of which still exist –
great clumps of rodgersias can be found in the woods. Today, despite
there being only limited staff and funds, there is much restoration
planting, and the whole place looks very well cared for and the trees
well labelled. I was particularly struck by shaded slopes with masses
of clumps of Gentiana
asclepiadea.

Moravia,
during the 19th
century, was one of the most advanced countries in the world in the
fields of animal and plant breeding and general agricultural and
horticultural 'improvement'. Gregor Mendel, remember, was in the
monastery of Brno here. The strange thing was that the Czech lands
were not independent but ruled by the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty and
German was the language of the educated. There is little in English
on this period, but years ago, while researching a history of plant
breeding, I did come across a pamphlet on the background to Mendel.
This made fascinating reading. There were some incredibly good
stories here: plant breeding involved monks, countesses and peasants,
priests and secret police, of nationalist struggles, repression,
religious disputation and occasional violence. Czech and Slovakia are
in many ways lands of stories – fairy tales are a big part of the
culture here, with much art, theatre, and the very strong tradition
of puppetry.

One
of the best stories was one I had come across, in an extraordinary
coincidence only the day before flying to Prague, was that of a
Dahlia Society used as a front for nationalist activity, in
particular a lady who was once elected the society's annual Dahlia
Queen, Božena Němcová, who became one of the key figures in the
revival and standardisation of the Czech language. She is
commemorated on the 500 Koruna banknote. Indeed, in the Dendrological
Garden, a short distance from Průhonice park, and first laid out in
the 1950s during the Soviet regime, is a huge display of dahlia
trials of modern Czech dahlia breeding.

On
a hilltop in the Dendrological Garden is a whole area of perennial
trial beds. Adam Baroš, who works here as a full-time researcher is
trying out a whole range of the German Mixed Planting schemes, so
that they can be evaluated for public planting here. The plot that
looked the best though was one of his own, based on his collections
of 'village plants', varieties collected from country gardens. The
gardens of houses in villages are indeed very cheerful here. I
remember years ago, when Jo was working in Bratislava in neighbouring
(and now independent Slovakia) how we drove the whole length of the
country in early June and every village garden was full of peonies
and irises. On later travels it was phlox and various daisies. Many
of these varieties, probably dated back to the 1920s and 1930s, as
clearly did many of the houses – this looked like it had been a
prosperous time.

The conference was organised by
Adam; he has been doing it for 7 or 8 years now and gets more people
every time, nearly all garden and landscape professionals. The
demographic, tending to the young and with a good gender balance.
People seem very enthusiastic. The theme was maintenance, which shows
a willingness to engage with what works, not just wanting
'inspiration'. My fellow speaker was Prof Bernd Hertle, from
Weihenstephan, who has undertaken research on a wide range of
planting schemes where staff time is logged, so that he can show
hours per square metre per year figures. Fascinating stuff. Cassian
Schmidt at Hermannshof continues to do this.

One of Bernd's charts on maintenance of different areas of plantings, I'll get round to translating it all one day.

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********
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About Me

Garden writer and researcher, lecturer and teacher, based in the England/Wales border region. An occasional designer of plantings for gardens and public spaces.Other interests, and subjects for occasional publication are agriculture, food politics and environmental issues. Chiefly known for promoting naturalistic and sustainable planting design, I am a believer in design and decision-making based on science and evidence – so I have not signed up to organic jihad. And - lot of globe-trotting doesn’t stop me gardening myself either!
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Gardeners are underpaid. We all know that. They are also often not understood. All too often I have been involved profession...

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Welcome to the garden....

This blog is a place for observations, thoughts and opinions that occur to me as a gardener, horticultural journalist, researcher and commentator on the garden and landscape scene. And sometimes on the food and agriculture scene too.... when, you should be warned, I sometimes express unfashionable thoughts.

PLANT SELECTION: LEARNING FROM NATURE

The first in a series of e-books I'm planning with My Garden School

I'm now doing e-books.

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En Francais.

Interview

In February I went to Switzerland to do a lecture for the Swiss Hardy Plant Society (rather quaintly called the Swiss Friends of Perennial Plants). Here is the original English version of an interview he did with me. (you can see German and French above). Merci à Xavier Allemann.